the sensation of drowning

i.
all my life i have hidden myself in the memory of a time and place half a planet and a whole decade away.  my faded cotton-candy dreams are no longer pink and sweet; they are light as cloud and i am so close to forgetting that i am afraid everything i have ever loved will go the same way.  i don’t want to fade into the ether of space.  i want to have a place in the world; i want to be found; i want to stop being lost.  

i am the only person who can find me and i fear i am not ready for it, now, when i need it most.


ii.
today, home stopped being a place i could run to.

all my life i have had this place where i cannot be found because it is mine.  but when walls are made by mothers and their drift is stayed by the hands of fathers, you learn that they are human and what they make is only as solid, as perfect as we are.  it is not that they do not love me enough to hold back the breach, but by the process of love they have given me all their strength, and now it is time for me to bury the anchor and lift the water where they are no longer strong enough.  i am to be the unforgiving beach to the ocean, a buffer for the land, and i fear that too soon, i too will crumble.

it is taking all of me not to crack in the weight of fear.


iii.
we are weakest when we are alone, and i – i am alone now.


iv.
i am haunted by the hand of worry.  i am buckling, all my sand is folding into softer ripples that are not durable, difficult enough to contain the sea.  the water embraces me like a doomed lover and i believe i am breathing but i am really just drowning and i cannot find the strength to topple my denial.


v.
i am being shaken and stolen and now that i am submerged, i finally realise that we were not meant to be a fortress for the ocean.

our struggles make us forget everything; what we are meant for, what we are made of.  we were meant to surrender ourselves to the currents carrying us beyond the tide, the sandpaper grate of salt against our thinner skin – we were meant to follow the flow and let it carry us wherever we may go.  

we were meant to float.  


we are made of hope.